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Dell PowerFlex vs Sunlight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerFlex
Ranking in HCI
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sunlight
Ranking in HCI
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell PowerFlex is 7.0%, down from 12.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sunlight is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell PowerFlex7.0%
Sunlight0.8%
Other92.2%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Serdar De - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at ÜÇGE Shopfitting & Design
Initial setup has been straightforward and it has reasonable pricing
We are new to this, so we are still learning about the valuable features The solution is okay overall. It could be easier to learn. We haven't had any issues. They could have more AI functionality in the future.  I have been using the solution for six months. I have not encountered any problems…
RajeshKANUMURY - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Executive Officer at GniYes Inc.
Performs well, effective, and has responsive remote technical support
Sunlight is a scalable solution. It supports on-premises and distributed deployments, as well as public deployments. It has a single pane of management so I can manage all of my VM installations in a distributed manner. It also has a footprint, that allows me to operate on Edge. If for example, you have a retail shop with 2,000 locations and they use a networked point of sale system, or if you are Chipotle and they have so many locations and they have to use a backend system at each location. At the moment, these are all standalone systems that operate with very little connection to the central. We could, however, connect and create a network using Sunlight. We can virtualize and run with Edge thanks to Sunlight. This allows us to operate and obtain high-end computing on Edge for retail. Sunlight is a startup. I am not sure how many users they have, but we have been using it constantly and using the technology to bring in customers.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Dell PowerFlex is a highly scalable solution."
"The integration with AWS is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The tool's most valuable features are its price and flexibility. It has high performance."
"PowerFlex allows us to scale compute and storage resources independently, which is extremely valuable for optimizing costs and right-sizing infrastructure based on workload demands, particularly in environments with variable AI and database workloads."
"The catalog of APIs for automation has been most valuable, although they are quite limited."
"It is easy to use for management and operations teams because the tools are in one place."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is integration."
"The performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more than 90 percent of the physical hardware capacity."
"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD. It has a very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN. For the same system, I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS. In terms of features, it has almost all the features, such as HA and centralized dashboards. It can be managed centrally, and the visibility of the system is very good. They also have very good technical support and customer or partner training."
 

Cons

"I think there might be some room for improvement when it comes to pricing, because although I know how to convert customers, at the end of day, it's quite expensive. Sometimes your feature architecture is still coming out much cheaper than hardware costs for your infrastructure."
"For customers with a budget, it is a ten out of ten for the product, though it becomes challenging for those with mid or low budgets since it is very costly compared to other solutions such as PowerStore."
"Compared to similar solutions, Dell PowerFlex is not cost-effective and has room for improvement."
"The biggest issue with the solution is that it doesn't support Hyper V. It's a big problem."
"They should provide continuous support for data migration."
"The solution’s automation and pricing could be improved."
"The support of containers needs to be improved. At present, it is limited to VMware. There needs to be direct communication with the hardware rather than through a hypervisor."
"They need to work on improving the overhead for protecting the data."
"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options. It should also be made easier to deploy on Unix operating systems. It is easy to deploy on Windows and Linux, but it is currently not easy to deploy on Unix."
"My recommendation would be to add this technology to Azure, Microsoft Azure so that we can bring it to the market, or deploy it on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Google. It is currently only available on Amazon's public cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for this solution is good."
"The solution is expensive and I give the cost a two out of ten."
"The solution's price is medium."
"The price could be improved."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the price as eight and a half. The tool is expensive."
"The price of the solution is fair, it is priced in the average range amongst competitors."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product is expensive."
"There is an operating cost for the VDIs, which is an additional cost. However, the licensing fee is half that of VMware or Nutanix."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What are the major differences between VxRail and Dell EMC PowerFlex?
VxRail vs. Dell EMC PowerFlex VxRail provides stable solutions for technical problems while at the same time not being too expensive for a company to invest in. Even if the user is working with a l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerFlex?
Dell PowerFlex is a premium software-defined infrastructure solution and while the initial investment may seem higher than traditional SAN or mid-tier HCI solutions, the long-term TCO is competitive.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerFlex?
Area of Improvement: While PowerFlex Manager is powerful, the UI could be more intuitive, especially for first-time users or non-technical admins. Streamlined navigation, contextual help and guided...
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Also Known As

VxFlex, VxRack FLEX, PowerFlex
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Canopy, 8x8Inc., Atos, Canadian Pacific, City of Denton, CenturyLink, BNP Paribas, Asyaport, EDF, CSC, Fox Sports, Insight, Hunter, KPIT, Paetec, Rosetta Stone, Sonda, Xerox
Lavazza, Infraspace
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerFlex vs. Sunlight and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.